Chicago Atlantic BDC, Inc.

Good day and welcome to Chicago Atlantic BDC Inc. First Quarter 2026 Earning Conference Call. All participants will be in the listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would like to turn the conference over to Lisa Kemps. Please go ahead, ma'am.

Thank you. Good morning. Welcome to the Chicago Atlantic BBC conference call to review the company's results. On the call today will be Peter Sack, Chief Executive Officer, Tom Jeffrey, Interim Chief Financial Officer, and Dino Colonna, President. Our results are released this morning in our earnings press release, which can be found on the investor relations section of our website. and in our supplemental earnings presentation filed with the SEC. A live audio webcast of this call is being made available today. For those who listened to the replay of this webcast, we remind you the remarks made herein are as of today and will not be updated subsequent to this call. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that certain statements that are not based on historical facts made during this call, including any statements related to financial guidance, may be deemed forward-looking statements under federal security laws. Such statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by those forward-looking statements. We encourage you to refer to our most recent SEC filings for information on some of these risk factors. Chicago Atlantic BBC assumes no obligation or responsibility to update any forward-looking statements Please note that the information recorded on this call speaks only as of today, May 14th, 2026. Therefore, you are advised that time-sensitive information may no longer be accurate at the time of any replay or transcript reading. I will now turn the call over to Peter Sack. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Lisa. Good morning, everyone. Chicago Atlantic BDC's record results this quarter demonstrate the benefits of our differentiated strategy. As the first publicly listed BDC focused primarily on lending to the cannabis industry, we remain uniquely positioned to participate in a market with limited competition. In an environment where other BDCs are struggling against credit performance, dividend coverage concerns, and interest rate uncertainty, Chicago Atlantic BDC has continued to strengthen its position. Net investment income for the first quarter of 2026 reached a record $10 million, or 44 cents per share. During the quarter, we executed on our pipeline, funding a record $93.9 million across seven portfolio companies, including three new borrowers. We efficiently utilized additional capacity on our credit facility, growing the portfolio to its largest level in company history. Today, we announced a 34-cent dividend, marking the seventh consecutive quarter at that rate. We continue to benchmark the company's performance against the broader public BDC industry, as documented in the Raymond James BDC Weekly Insights as of May 1, 2026, and Oppenheimer's BDC Quarterly Report as of March 27, 2026. Our weighted average yield on debt investments as of March 31, 2026 was 15.8%, compared to 10.8% for the average public BDC. 100% of our debt portfolio is senior secured. 1.3% of our total investment portfolio has exposure to sub-debt, equity or JV investments compared to other BDCs who have an average exposure of 25.5%. 94% of the portfolio at par is either fixed rate or floating rate at their respective floor. insulating the company against a drop in interest rates. 100 basis point drop in benchmark rates would have an estimated annualized impact of less than 15 basis points on interest income. Importantly, our floating rate loans, combined with our rate floor protections, provides a structural advantage in portfolio construction. Only 2.6% of the portfolio at fair value has exposure to the software industry. We believe that our investments have very little overlap with the investments made by other public BDCs due to our unique investment strategy focused on underserved markets. The portfolio is under levered with only 54.5 million of debt as of quarter end with 0.18 times debt to equity ratio. This compares with the BDC average of 1.3 times debt to equity ratio, providing us with ample room to expand our liquidity and still below industry average for leverage. Lastly, we have no non-accruals compared with an industry average of 3.4% of costs. In addition to our record quarter in April, federal cannabis policy momentum accelerated meaningfully. The Department of Justice took a significant step announcing that state licensed medical cannabis products will be moved from Schedule I to Schedule III. This represents the most significant federal policy shift in decades. The rescheduling will eliminate the onerous 280e tax code, meaning that medical cannabis will be taxed like a normal business on pre-tax income and no longer taxed on gross profit. Operators with medical cannabis market exposure will benefit with increased cash flow and strengthened balance sheets over time. We foresee this as favorably impacting the credit quality of our borrowers, although each business will be impacted differently based on their medical market exposure. We await the administrative hearing scheduled for June 29th, when the rescheduling of recreational cannabis will be considered. The outcome of this hearing, expected to conclude by July 15th, could have tremendous impact on the economics of the broader cannabis industry in the U.S., including increasing capital markets and M&A activity, which Chicago Atlantic is well positioned to benefit from. While the current regulatory trajectory supports improved industry economics, we believe that Ongoing federal constraints and industry complexity will limit new large-scale lending competition in the near term. Consistent with our historical approach, we will maintain our rigorous underwriting standards based on today's regulatory framework, not potential future regulatory reform. In conclusion, relying on our niche strategy enables us to operate in markets with limited competition and generate yields above our BDC peers. By focusing on underserved segments of the debt market, we benefit from strong pricing power with meaningful downside protection. We believe cannabis and the lower middle market remain structurally attractive relative to larger markets with less competition, stronger lender controls, and stable underlying credit fundamentals. The company's performance through volatile markets underscores the resilience of our business model and its ability to support a consistent dividend. Now we'll turn it over to Tom to discuss the numbers in greater detail.